West Indian epic: when Gordon Greenidge unleashed hell on Australia

On Australia’s spiteful 1991 tour of the West Indies, Gordon Greenidge’s 226 at Barbados was the last flickering of greatness from a master batsman, detailed by Daniel Harris in an extract from ‘Masterly Batting: 100 great Test centuries’

Smiling assassin: Gordon Greenidge was a towering figure at the top of the batting order in the greatest of all West Indies sides but he left his best until last in the Barbados Test of Australia’s 1991 Caribbean tour.
Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge. Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge. How could you possibly be called Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge and not be a brilliant bastard? You could not possibly be called Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge and not be a brilliant bastard. It is scientifically, biologically, psychologically, philosophically impossible to be called Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge and not be a brilliant bastard. Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge was a brilliant, brilliant bastard.

Most viscerally striking was the speed and power of his stroke, imparted via forearms fashioned from elasticated rope, but the apparatus underpinning them was equally important: dancer’s feet, and an eye that could curdle curd. Or, put another way, within Greenidge coalesced the qualities of timing and technique that define batsmanship. Most sportsmen are left with little choice as regards how to play, serfs to their talent, but the very best are able to do as they please, impressing personality upon ability. This was such a man.

That’s the brilliance; the bastardliness was more complex. Like so many of the best cricketers, sportsmen and anythings, Greenidge was cocky, aggressive and grudge-bearing, admirable and dislikeable for the self-same characteristics. Aspects of them were innate and aspects of them were provoked.

In 1965, when Greenidge was 14, he left Barbados for Reading, where differences in culture and climate were exacerbated by racism, making for a miserable time. But he developed as a cricketer, joining Hampshire and going on to form a legendary opening partnership with Barry Richards. Then, in 1973 and after rejecting England, he returned home to play himself into West Indies’ Test team, picked to make his debut at Bangalore a year later along with some other kid called IVA Richards. Pre-match, the chatter concerned how a rain-affected strip might assist the Indian spinners, and then West Indies won by 267 runs with Greenidge scoring 93 and 107.

Gordon Greenidge of the West Indies hooks during the World Cup semi-final at the Oval In London. Photograph: Adrian Murrell/Getty Images

But the innings that defined him - and in a way, his era - came at Lord’s in 1984. One-up after the first Test, West Indies were on the back foot in the second, England declaring early on the fifth day to set a notional victory target of 342. Incredibly, it was reached for the loss of just one wicket and in only 66.1 overs, thanks principally to Greenidge’s controlled, but not less alarming violence. Out of form at the time – in his six previous innings on tour he had managed just 85 runs – and batting with an injured leg, he scored principally in boundaries, annihilating 29 fours and two sixes in his 214 not out. “Every little bit of power you could imagine going into that”, marvelled Richie Benaud after one particularly vicious straight drive.

Though by then West Indies had been the best team in the world for a few years, Greenidge’s knock ported them into a different domain. Dominating and consistent victories are one thing, seemingly impossible victories something else entirely, and the preserve of the very finest; a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating prophecy that endures even when the ability that facilitated it has expired.

Few teams in sporting history has carried similar aura, their strength grounded not just in ability but in attitude. Representing newly independent and confident islands united for nothing else, they inspired an identity that extended far beyond simple affiliation to a sports team based on coincidence of residence, proudly proclaiming a shared history and oppression.

The notion that international competition, the battle between one arbitrary landmass and another, is not political, is a fatuous one. But even in that context cricket is different, its fierceness of a different order to that in every other sport. The story of the game is the story of civilization – rather “civilization” – its rivalries based on more than simple them and us dichotomies with antipathies rooted not in competition but in actual, real things, a narrative with a moral dimension. And, in this case, a clear, unarguable line of right and wrong.

So against England, Greenidge unleashed the rage of generations. “All those years of hurt now have to be put in focus”, he explained. “My anger came up in the way I played. I felt that to forcefully go at what I was doing, to attack, perhaps was a way of letting out that anger. It wouldn’t be right to do that on another human being, although it felt like it at times, but I’m sure gonna take it out on five and a half ounces, so I took it out on the ball.”

And from December 1984 onwards, West Indies were led not by the measured Clive Lloyd but by Viv Richards, a man who put the ire into fire, the ow into power and the fucking fury into fucking fury. “Some of them really look at you out there like you should be hunted”, he said. “But I can tell you, no man is going to hunt me in this day and age. I take up the pursuing first.”

No side were pursued with greater alacrity than Australia. The last of the cricketing nations to disengage with apartheid South Africa, and only then following protests against a planned rugby tour, its sporting establishment had also raged at Peter Norman’s role in Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ salute at the 1968 Olympics – an event that meant a lot to many in the West Indies team.

Gordon Greenidge on the attack against England during the fourth Test at Bridgetown in 1990. Photograph: Patrick Eagar/Patrick Eagar via Getty Images

But it was personal, too – with Richards and Greenidge, it always was – but in this instance, specifically so. Touring Australia in 1975-76, the racist abuse the players received from the crowd was both distressing and formative. “Being bombarded by comments and behaviour, well, I’d encountered some ignorance before, but this was very different, very very different...it degraded me and downgraded me a great deal,” said Greenidge.

Then, during the next series between the sides in 1977-78, Richards’ pectorals were traversed by Bobby Simpson, the Australia captain, with particular offence taken at his behaviour towards umpires. But there was more to it than that, and in later years, particularly once Simpson was appointed coach, he was one of the most outspoken critics of West Indian methods – “brutal”, “wild”, “dangerous” were some of those suggestions – and Richards was no fan.

Matters reached a pitch in 1991, when the teams, comfortably the world’s best, met to contest the ‘World Championship Series’. Simpson got things going by suggesting that West Indies’ batting was brittle, also accusing them of intimidating umpires and deliberately slow over-rates – what he termed “professional fouls” – and amity burgeoned from there. “Bobby Simpson and other individuals were shouting their mouths off”, Richards would later tell the press. “I never shouted my mouth off. I dismiss anything that Simpson says. He is a moaner and bad loser. He is a very sour sort of guy. Bobby Simpson ain’t our cup of tea at all.”

But there was plenty that happened prior to then. Despite West Indies’ 10-year unbeaten run, the same England side filleted in the 1989 Ashes had then travelled to the Caribbean and competed; Australia had reason to believe. Though not yet the unfathomably confident lunatics they would become, they nonetheless boasted a collection of bristling, bustling larrikins: men like Allan Border, David Boon, Merv Hughes, Dean Jones, Craig McDermott and the Waughs. And their unique but still developing brand of psychicide went down exceptionally badly with their hosts. The insults began during the one-dayers that preceded the Tests, Mark Waugh’s invective directing Desmond Haynes hutchwards following a marginal lbw decision in Guyana. Then, during the Australian innings, when a ball sneaked out of Phil Simmons’ hand before intended, Border stepped down the pitch to whack it for four. As such, the two captains spent the tea interval exchanging language at volume.

Australia took the rubber 4-1, clinching it in Bridgetown where West Indies had not been beaten for 56 years. But it was once the Tests began that things became really serious, the series ringing and throbbing with every facet of the spontaneous drama that makes sport the most compelling of all human inventions, simultaneously reality and fantasy, epic and animation, buddy movie and biopic.

The contest began in Jamaica where, despite having the better of things, the visitors finished irate; rudimentary covers elongated the various rain delays, denying them the opportunity to force a win. And West Indies’ selectors were concerned, informing Richards of their plan to drop Jeff Dujon, Malcolm Marshall – and Greenidge – for the second Test. “He has been hit on the head” said one; “Haven’t we all,” rejoindered Viv. “He is not picking up the ball…He’s finished”, interjected a second; “He’s lost it”, agreed a third. Naturally, Richards was convinced that the matter was personal and protected his men, even though Greenidge had passed 50 just once in the previous two years.

Greenidge bats at Port of Spain, Trinidad, during England’s 1990 Test tour of the West Indies. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

So the team for Guyana was unchanged – but the atmosphere there was very different. At the 50-over game, a vex crowd had supported the tourists; the country’s predominantly East Indian population took exception to Richards’ assertion that his team was an African one. But a later clarification meant that things were back to normal by the time the players returned, and a near run-a-ball partnership of 297 between Haynes and Richie Richardson helped West Indies to a first-innings lead in excess of 200, parlayed into a ten-wicket victory. And Richards was two-thirds vindicated: Marshall took three wickets in each innings and Dujon a total of seven catches. On the other hand, Greenidge was first out for 2 and then, with West Indies requiring just 31 to win, Haynes swiped 23 off 27 balls while he could only finagle 5 off 21.

But this was not all that happened; of course this was not all that happened. During Australia’s second innings, Courtney Walsh – who, playing for Jamaica earlier in the tour, had hit both Mark Waugh and McDermott – clean-bowled Dean Jones, who failed to hear the call of no-ball in the ensuing bangarang so departed the crease. In the meantime, Carl Hooper dashed across from gully, uprooted middle stump and begun a celebration as the square-leg umpire raised a finger – even though, in order to be run out, a batsman must attempt a run.

Convinced that Australia would have done the same, West Indies experienced not the remotest guilt, and after the game, when Jones was asked how he might have acted were the roles reversed, he smirked and said that he did not respond to hypothetical questions. He then approached Richards to offer his congratulations, only to be shocked by the stunted nature of the shrift dispensed thereupon. “After being abused by a guy,” Richards later explained, “you don’t expect him to come over and say, ‘How are you doing? You want a Toohey’s?’ You don’t do things like that. When I draw the sword, I draw the sword. When I draw it, that’s it.”

The confrontation crystallised the crux of the conflict. For West Indies, respect was essential, indivisible and absolute; the required intimidation was achieved via presence and deed. Australia, on the other hand, considered respect a fluid notion, largely irrelevant in the course of competition and most likely to take the form of disrespect, the aim distraction by provocation. Essentially, they were able to employ a certain levity, treating sport as simply sport.

The Trinidad Test was ruined by rain, after which the teams moved to Bridgetown – where, traditionally, West Indies bowlers were at their most sphincter-looseningly fearsome. Assessing the pitch as one that gave Australia a decent chance of winning, Border decided that he required just three frontline quicks, supplemented by his own spin and the Waughs’ trundlers. “Like a good Gabba or Adelaide Oval wicket,” he declared, “with predictable bounce and good pace.”

But the principal focus of attention was Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge, playing on his home ground where he had scored just one Test century in 21 innings. He was also just a couple of weeks shy of his 40th birthday, and his fame was such that everyone on the island knew it. “Gordon, he over de ropes, man” was the refrain amongst the locals, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Amidst a cacophony of horns and improvised drums, Australia won the toss and elected to field, the 10th team in a row so to do – though the tactic had only delivered victory for West Indies. But given their line-up they had no choice, needing the benefit of whatever juice was in the pitch, and they used it well. McDermott made the first incision, tempting Greenidge to hook directly to Bruce Reid at long leg with the score on 17, and wickets fell rapidly thereafter.

And – of course – there was additional beef. With the score on 22-3, McDermott swung a ball away from Haynes, who shouldered arms as it caught his shirt on the way through. Behind the stumps, Ian Healy went up for the catch without really meaning it, so Haynes indicated what had happened, only for Healy to apprise him of the extent to which this was not his place – in explicit style. But Haynes was in Barbados, ‘my home, in front of my people’, and accordingly found such behaviour ‘harder to take and easier to snap back’. So he didn’t take it and he did snap back, theatrically flinging off his helmet and brandishing his bat behind his head, suggesting that the two of them reconvene at close of play in order to perpetrate violence. Accordingly, Healy blew him a kiss, and when a speck of dust landed in his eye shortly afterwards, Boon refused to clear it for him.

Because the series was transmitted from the islands to a worldwide audience, the first between the sides so to be, kerfuffle begat kerfuffle; the global pandemic of remote offence-taking had begun its creep as early as 1991. Meanwhile, out in the middle, Haynes was then dismissed for 28, after which the hosts collapsed to 149 all out in just 61.1 overs.

Highlights of Gordon Greenidge’s epic 226 against Australia at Barbados in 1991.

But any side facing West Indies knew well the downside – and trepidation – that a pitch offering help to its bowlers would do the same for their better ones, and thus it was. In the space of just six overs, Taylor was out lbw after a delivery from Ambrose kept low, Ambrose broke Border’s finger for him, and Jones was also forced to seek medical attention. Then Marshall bowled Border with a grass-cutter, and suddenly the impression was of a pitch misbehaving; Australia were decimated for 134, their last seven wickets contributing just 39 runs.

So it was on the second afternoon that West Indies came out to begin their second innings, Greenidge not so much fighting for his place – he didn’t have long left, whatever happened – but for dignity and pride. And he was seriously feeling the pressure.

There is perhaps no sporting examination more severe than opening the batting in Test cricket, certainly none more extensive and probing. The Tour de France might be harder, but is principally a suffering competition, the aim for most of those involved simply to finish; combat sport is painful but lasts a maximum of 33 minutes, three or four times a year; tennis is physically arduous, but there is neither variety of opponents nor frisson of danger.

Facing the new ball, on the other hand, taxes every faculty, physical and mental, that a sportsman can possibly be forced to employ: speed, skill, strength, agility, bravery, application, improvisation, instinct and intellect.

The first delivery of the innings was an obliging one, McDermott straying onto the pads and Greenidge turning it down towards the fence at square-leg. Hughes then garnished the error by galumphing into a misfield, exceptionally well-received by the exceptionally proximate locals – in particular a dancing man with a long, inflatable banana, able to lean over and wave it about his ears.

Steadily, Greenidge settled in, taking the score to 30 before beating a booming drive through extra-cover off the bowling of Reid. Gradually, he widened his array of strokes to include his trademark drives and pulls, the glorious thwack of leather on willow suddenly more menacing than comforting. But though his batting was fuelled by anger, never did it manifest in indulgent explosion, rather a focused, rolling boil. Consequently, if a ball could be hit, it was obliterated, but if it couldn’t, then it wasn’t; there was no compulsive flailing. Replete with arrogance, devoid of ego, his shot selection showcased the beautiful side of discrimination.

And he was discriminating hard against Reid, hooking a low bouncer to the boundary – precisely the shot that had got him out in the first innings. Only this time he was well on top of the ball, the sign an ominous one: Australia had only three real bowlers and a captain stuck on the balcony.

In the circumstances, they needed all the help that they could get, so appealed confidently when a Hughes inswinger clattered the inside of Greenidge’s front pad, below the knee-roll. But umpire Cumberbatch, the man responsible for Jones’s dismissal in Guyana, had seen an inside-edge and adjudged him not out.

With Steve Waugh already on, the Australian attack must surely have suspected its impending destruction, but the manner in which Greenidge raised his fifty told of a despisèd life. First, a power-tuck to the mid-wicket boundary sent Jones thudding against the hoarding in deepest futility, and then the landmark was greeted with the most cursory of bat raises. This was not over, not by a long way.

The next milestone was the hundred partnership, established by way of a deft flick to fine-leg and showing Greenidge to be complete control of his technique. This was further illustrated by an apparently gentle drive to the cover boundary off Mark Waugh, its apparently dainty execution belied by a resonant knuck and the speed at which the ball disappeared. At close of play, he stood at 85 not out, now batting with the nightwatchman, Malcolm Marshall, sent out when Haynes was caught behind for 40.

Marshall’s dismissal early the following morning served only to bring Richie Richardson to the crease, who quickly unfurled the more relaxed sadism of the younger generation. Not a man to drop twice, Australia dropped him twice, and he set about administering due punishment, his timing exquisite and square-drive causing particular devastation.

At the other end, Greenidge accumulated more slowly, determined to take maximum advantage of the form he’d somehow manufactured. Then, with his score on 93, he hopped to hammer a short one from McDermott, missing out on a boundary after picking out Steve Waugh at cover-point. Sufficiently demoralised to consider this a victory, the bowler disbursed various verbals to which – obviously – Greenidge responded, finger-pointing a threat as McDermott ironically intimated fear.

And the patter continued after Hughes again beat the bat with an inswinger, this time hitting even lower on the pad and with Greenidge even further across his stumps. Again, the appeal was rejected, the two men sarcastically clapping one another after a subsequent delivery was met with the perfect forward-defensive shot.

Soon after, Greenidge raised his century with an almighty cover-drive off McDermott, though despite the jubilation in the crowd, there was still neither fist-pumping nor bat-swiping; this was not over, not by a long way. Even when Richardson came down the pitch to offer congratulation, leading with a handshake but hankering for a hug, the focus remained, Greenidge turning away to ensure only a brief touch of gloves.

In quick time, the score motored towards 200, whereupon an irate McDermott was persuaded to bang one in short, and in response, Greenidge performed a one-legged pirouette – but not to play a pull. Instead, he somehow kept his bat straight, adding a flourish at once necessary and exaggerated, and once more, the ball steamed to the square-leg boundary.

At 220-2, Australia’s last chance to avert a massacre: the second new ball. Immediately: a massacre. Their bowlers were savaged for 40 runs in five overs and 85 in 12, the 23 overs between lunch and tea yielding a total of 124.

This persuaded Reid to have a shy from around the wicket, clunking in like a human-shaped ironing board. So Greenidge clouted him through extra-cover, elaborate backlift flowing into a drive and following through into a whipcurl, then swatted the next, fuller effort to long-off for four more. He was seeing it.

And he was also approaching satisfaction, arriving at 150 with a drive taken from outside off stump and dispatched to long-on for three. This time the bat was waved – now it was a proper innings, and it was he who had compiled it: time to drub it in.

West Indies’ 300 was achieved by way of straight-drive – “a bit of variety” explained Michael Holding’s laconic commentary – before another drive was abused through the covers and a flagellation through mid-wicket brought up his double-century. The third-oldest man to reach the landmark behind Jack Hobbs and Patsy Hendren, the hint of a smile played across his moustache as he pointed pointedly towards the pavilion at the only men who hadn’t doubted him. His fourth Test 200 had taken 563 minutes and 402 balls – almost twice as long as his first – and was furnished with 30 fours.

Then, after two more boundaries – one a murderous crack to square-leg – he played across the line trying to swish Hughes from off to leg, missing when it kept a little low and falling lbw. But given the 226 runs he’d accumulated it seemed more like an act of sarcasm than a genuine dismissal; West Indies’ lead now stood at a match-winning 469.

On his way off, Greenidge removed his helmet, looking dapper even in headband and the sweat of more than 11 hours at the crease, pausing to wave his bat to all sides of the ground; it was over and he made sure everyone knew it. Throughout his career he batted for the cause, but this one was for him: his highest Test score, in his penultimate Test match, to clinch a series; less dead cat bounce, more resuscitated lion vault. The brilliant bastard.